


Early Arrival

by Vanny



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vanny/pseuds/Vanny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My personal Lord English theory. And that's all I'm gonna say about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Early Arrival

_You’re supposed to kill her._

Doc Scratch puts the gun in his hand and stares down facelessly, inscrutable, and for a moment the coolness of the grip cuts through the ringing in his ears and the pain in his head and the taste of blood in his mouth, and it comes like a white bolt from a pitch-black Derse night: he could kill her.

It has simply never been an option before. It would mean an end to the universe. And though he hates to admit it, he’s attached to her, to her horribleness, her endlessly oppressive presence in his life, the way she cuts him open with weapons and words and the slim lines of her body.

But there were things he lived for: his town, his crew. Both gone. There might be other living beings in the universe, but he doesn’t know or care. It could all plunge away into fire and then nothing, and him and her with it, and he wouldn’t care. And there is the matter of revenge: when a man’s gang is killed, he is supposed to do something about it. And, of course, at the end of it all, Lord English will finally show, and isn’t that what he’s after? To take down English?

His loose grip on the gun becomes a clench, and--

He’s there. He doesn’t even have to find her. She’s waiting. Her whip is pooled on the floor at her feet and her gun lies with the chamber open, bullets scattered on the floor. She is smoking a cigarette with her bare fingers, holderless, and smiling.

“The final cigarette before I face the firing squad,” she says in her voice that is like claws raking down his back in the best and worst way. “It’s traditional.”

“Very fucking funny,” he says back. “Let me guess, now you’re going to teleport over here and take my other arm off with your bare fucking hands or something, right?” And when she says nothing, he snarls, “Answer me!”

“I hadn’t planned on it. Look, Slick, if you’re going to waste time, you can at least let me smoke my cigarette in peace.”

And when has she ever given him peace? That decides him. He selects a sword from his deck for her, the double-edged, one of his finest, and runs her through. She doesn’t even flinch. She puts her hands around the hilt slowly, almost caressingly, but makes no attempt to pull it out. There’s a stain spreading from the wound, but not fast enough to suit him, so he closes his hands over hers and jerks the sword back out of her.

The bleeding begins in earnest then. The green of her coat darkens the blood, and soon the front of her is black with it. A broad grin stretches wide, almost painfully wide across his face as she begins to sag at the knees. She sits down hard, unable to balance, a small indignity that makes his heart clench even as he relishes it. She gasps, then coughs sharply into a shaking hand. She lets it drop away, and there is blood on her lips.

There are sounds other than her labored breathing, and somewhere around them, the world is ending, but Slick can’t take his eyes off her. He kneels beside her as she begins to slump sideways and slings his mechanical arm around her, supporting her. “Hey,” he says. She turns her eyes to him, and for a moment he can’t say anything, because she’s smiling with bloody teeth, a smile he knows, the smile that means she’s won. But her chest is heaving fast and shallow, and he doesn’t have much time. “Hey,” he says again, louder.

“Yeah?”

“Your boss. English. He shows up soon, yeah?” He grins manically down at her. “When you die?”

She chokes a bubbling laugh and presses her hand to his cheek, but she can’t hold it there; he is forced to take it in his own and hold it himself.

“Oh, Slick,” she says, and caresses his face with her other hand, a touch as light as her panting breath, “he’s already here.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Hey Vanny, are you ever going to finish Desertion?"  
> "No."
> 
> Just kidding. I will, eventually. I like to think you give a damn whether I do or not.


End file.
